Artist Talk – Sunju Lee

This weeks artist talk was done by Sunju Lee, a Korean artist who is currently a resident as the University of Bedfordshire.

Firstly Sunju explained to us her main study “A Practiced Place” and how she is currently looking at occupied space and reaction in a given moment and therefore the relationship between space and experience.

Her practice involved choosing a particular space that is of interest to her and repeatedly photographing the space to highlight the shadows and layers. This would document for her all the happenings of the place in a given time. Sunju’s aim is to rebuild a situation rather than conceal it.

She started her talk by showing work she had completed using digital printing, drawing and painting. She works both in 2D but also showed us one of her installation projects in which she drew on drafting paper. All of her work to me is very abstract but really draws to viewer in. I found her use of mediums alternative and I feel her use of experimentation on different kinds of materials, and using different kinds of mediums, shows us how she is very careful about the quality of her work and she wants to find the best way to get her message across.

Her choice of medium to document is printing. She explained to us how this is an important part of her practice however she really enjoys experimentation. Recently she had been printing onto invisible thread put into a frame which incorporates the use of layers. She brought in one of the pieces for us to look at an it is an interesting and visually stunning piece.

I really enjoyed listening to the talk on Sunju’s practice. I found her research process and her ideas behind her art as exciting as the pieces themselves. She took us through a lot of her practice leading up to her printing on threads work and it helped us to visualise the path she has taken through both research and medium to arrive at her current point. I feel I have learnt a lot from her talk notably that experimentation is key to getting the best results from your work. I think I personally would gain from trying out alternative materials such as Sunju has done.